BLair’s Animal Corner
News from Scotland:Extraverted Gorillas Live Longer
Feeling low? Want to stay inside? It may kill you. In a broad long-term study out of Edinburgh, he more social, active, playful, and curious gorillas had a significantly longer lifespan.Finally, someone else upset about the “Panda Effect”!
The rental of two pandas to the zoo in Edinburgh has brought in a 50% raise in visitors and profits, but is it for the good of the species? Or just a money-making scheme?
Also (if time):Tobacco – Good for Baby Birds?!
The nicotine and other chemicals in cigarettes turn out to be an extremely effective repellant for parasitic mites that may feast on baby birds. What’s more the cellulose in the butts is a fantastic insulator. Was this a deliberate choice by the birds or a happy accident? Either way, I don’t look forward to the hoarse, phlegmy bird calls in the morning…

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Physics Police

Posted December 18, 2012 at 6:29 PM

14:50 Scientist says Eureka!, public says, What? What?, scientist says, We’ll get back to you.
This scientist has a name, you know! His name is John Grotzinger.
He was interviewed on Morning Edition back in November.
The quotation he gave, which was later blown way out of proportion, is:

This data is gonna be one for the history books.

The data he’s referring to is from Curiosity’s SAM instrument.
In fact, earlier in the interview, he said:

We’re getting data from SAM as we sit here and speak.

Grotzinger was perfectly clear that the data was not yet in!!!
He was expressing his own genuine excitement, but said nothing about discovering anything at all.
There were no cries of eureka.
The goons at NPR failed to communicate the nature and status of the experiment to their audience.
Instead, they conjured up an air of secrecy.
This is a classic trick of the bad journalist; invent a mystery to keep things interesting.
Then, the other, larger herd of goons, the public, invented and spread rumor of some big discovery.
This is their own failing, and a consequence of their eagerness to believe in unsubstantiated nonsense.

1:13:40 Black holes usually come from the collapse of a star… right?1:14:25 It can’t be a black hole from a collapsed star if there weren’t any stars yet!1:14:35 They call it a quasar verses a black hole, too.
Yes, Quasars are active galactic nuclei; that’s fancy talk for stuff flowing into a huge black hole.
This type of huge black hole exists at the center of all galaxies.
It sends out jets of particles which moderate star formation, allowing the galaxy to grow around it.
In other words, you start with the galactic nucleus, and form the galaxy (all its stars) around that.
We can conclude that the nucleus existed PRIOR to the star forming epoch.
So (at least some) galactic nuclei must be older than the oldest stars in the universe.
In fact, these seeds of galaxies can be seen in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
Ancient anisotropies resulted in over-dense regions which collapsed due to their gravitation.
They formed black holes very early on, which exist to this day, at the core of all galaxies.